EU Referendum


Ukraine: MH17 – two weeks on


01/08/2014



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With two weeks elapsed since the downing of MH17, we are no closer to learning what really happened. Official investigators have been unable to access the crash site and the only really significant development is the emergence of a major conspiracy industry, combined with a continued determination on the part of the media to pin the blame of the Russians.

One example of the plethora of emergent conspiracies was posted recently by Gordon Duff on CCN ireport (now removed). This was a video purporting to be obtained from a weather satellite, said to be showing the launch of a BUK mission, cited as evidence that Ukrainian forces had shot down MH17.

Picked up and spread uncritically by diverse sources, it takes a little time for the debunking to deliver the goods. But the stupidity has been well and truly debunked. Not only, it seems, have the satellite owners disowned the "video", not least on the basis that their satellites do not record videos, it seems that the actual footage is taken from a video game and is thus completely fake.

This material, at least, did not reach the Putin-obsessed legacy media, but this is the sort of stuff that the Daily Mail was churning out yesterday, briefly its lead online report.

Copied out almost verbatim from Buzzfeed, a post written by Max Seddon who asserted that a Russian soldier had posted pictures to Instagram "that show him operating military equipment inside Ukraine, including manning a missile launcher system of the type used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17".

Actually, the pictures (or the brief narratives that go with them) did no such thing. They had communications specialist Alexander Sotkin making what appears to be brief incursions into Ukrainian territory in early July, in one episode apparently riding in an armoured personnel carrier. 

But the only time Sotkin writes of a BUK is in a brief reference to working on one after he has returned to Russia. Even then, far too much may be being read into this. The word used is "???" rather than the cyrilic "???" standing for BUK, a Russian abbreviation for "notebook" and also slang for a laptop computer. It has also been pointed out that Sotkin used a laptop symbol with the word in his text.

It is on such slender intelligence that the media's case is built, with the detail of the "incursions" having little more substance.  Sotkin is apparently based in Voloshino (topmost arrow on map) a few miles from the eastern Ukranian border, but on 5 July, the Mail gets excited about his Instagram geolocation showing him to be in the Krasnyi Derkul area, about 30 miles northeast of Luhanska (lower arrow). 

This is cited as evidence that "could prove Putin is operating in Ukraine" but, as always, the full story isn't been told. Looking at the map, this area is part of a small and almost completely uninhabited salient that projects into Russian territory, defined by an arbitrary and unmarked border.

The natural border in the area is the River Derkul, to the west of which – on the Ukrainian side – are cliff-like structures forming an obvious demarcation. To the east is a narrow road which roughly follows the river, cutting across the neck of the salient – from Russian territory, briefly into Ukraine and then back into Russia.

This is the only road out of Voloshino going south and is a logical patrol and communication route. There is no alternative route which follows the official border. No one could patrol that border without traversing arable fields, partly against the grain of the terrain.

Thus, even assuming the Instagram geolocation is accurate, to make anything of the narrative plagiarised from Buzzfeed is utterly bizarre.  Likely the route through the salient has been used as a short-cut for as long as the border has existed, and even before.

All this "revelation" really shows, therefore, is the continued determination of the western media – and the Mail in particular - to demonstrate that Putin has in some way been responsible for the downing of MH17. 

By way of an antidote, however, the mindless Russophobia has been examined up by a group of ex-Intelligence professionals who call themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

In a far-reaching and intelligent commentary, they are responding to the local civil war in Ukraine turning into a US confrontation with Russia, calling for President Obama "to release what evidence he has about the tragedy and silence the hyperbole".

The US administration, they note, still has not issued coordinated intelligence assessment summarising what evidence exists to determine who was responsible. Nor have they supplied evidence convincingly to support repeated claims that MH17 was downed by a Russian-supplied missile in the hands of Ukrainian separatists.

The US administration, they complain, has not provided any satellite imagery showing that the separatists had the weaponry that could down MH17, and also that there are several other "dogs that have not barked".

Obama's credibility, and that of Washington's as a whole, they say, "will continue to erode", should the President be unwilling – or unable – to present more tangible evidence behind administration claims. Charges against Russia should be rooted in solid, far more convincing evidence.

The former intelligence professionals are also troubled by the "amateurish manner in which fuzzy and flimsy evidence has been served up" – some of it via "social media" – and as intelligence professionals they are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information.

As Americans, they say to Obama, "we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay".

In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, they conclude, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence. His statements seem premature and bear the hallmarks of an attempt to "poison the jury pool".

It is this same abject failure, of course, which led to airlines not being told about the emerging threat. And that failure has to be considered partly responsible for lack of avoidance measures, implementation of which could have prevented MH17 from being shot down in the first place.

The longer this failure continues, though, the more poisonous will become relations with Russia, and the more the conspiracies will proliferate. We need this issue settled. We need the hyperbole silenced.

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